Now it’s your turn. I urge our readers to see Tangled, directed by Nathan Greno and Byron Howard, this weekend and return here with your thoughts. If you don’t agree with my opinion, let me know why. Only comments by those who have seen the film will be approved below.
“I believe we’ll outperform The Princess and the Frog,” says Disney worldwide theatrical distribution chief Chuck Viane. “The question is, are we Bolt? Are we Enchanted? Or are we something bigger?”
Tangled opens today in a crowded holiday frame led by the latest Harry Potter film. The Wrap wrote about the film’s box office prospects and says earning projections are in the $40 million range for the five-day Thanksgiving holiday. Share your predictions in the comments below for the FIVE-DAY holiday gross. The person who comes closest to the final total will win something courtesy of Cartoon Brew. Don’t guess the same number as somebody else otherwise the first person who guessed the number will win. (NOTE: We’re locking the predictions on Thursday night.)
UPDATE: Many Brew readers are predicting $60 million and above. You may be right. According to Deadline, anonymous sources are saying that Tangled is opening “much bigger than expected. Double the 5-day estimates of $35M to $40M.”
You know what would be interesting. If someone took ALL of the legitimate estimates in our comments and found the average. How closely would the collective response of Brew readers match the final box office total. If anybody wants to do this after we close the poll tomorrow night, let me know.
Yesterday we looked at new and emerging markets in animation. One commenter, Mike Rauch of the Rauch Brothers, was just as excited as I was, and calls this paradigm shift in animation “as big a deal as Gutenberg’s printing press.”
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NBC’s Joe McHale/Chevy Chase sitcom Community is doing a holiday themed show in faux-Rankin-Bass style stop-motion. Here’s a 13-second preview snippet from the upcoming December 9th episode:
If you are in Southern California this holiday weekend weekend, this might be of interest: The Art Institute of California is holding a free visual storytelling workshop featuring:
Floyd Norman…….. Disney Legend, Writer, Storyboard Artist/Diney/Pixar
Ernesto Nemesio…..Background Painter/ Pixar
Carole Holliday…….Director, Character Desinger /formerly DisneyThis is a rare opportunity into the minds of three professional animation story tellers as they design and shape an organic story through audience participation and demonstrations of both traditional and digital designs. In this four hour workshop a story will crafted, characters and backgrounds will be drafted with the help of you and the participating guest speakers.
You must RSVP to attend, and arrive early as seating is limited. The workshop will take place Saturday November 27th from 12 noon to 4pm at:
The Art Institute of California Inland Empire
674 E Brier Dr
San Bernardino, CA
For more information, click here.
A nice little teaser trailer as cute as the poster:
Simon Wells directs this Image Movers Digital (re: Zemeckis) production. Disney is releasing it in March. Mo-cap or Mo-crap? You decide:
(Thanks, Ben Price)
Still from “Why Can’t We Walk Straight
In terms of opportunities and amount of work available, there is no better time to be working as an animator than today. More new avenues for animated content are springing up than ever before. For decades, the choices were straightforward: TV, features, commercials, music videos, and shorts. Today those limited number of options have been upended as every form of media and creative practice is somehow incorporating animation into its sphere, from news programs to architecture.
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Sascha Ciezata (When Herzog Rescued Phoenix, When Lynch Met Lucas) animated this holiday special, featuring Sarah Silverman recalling a pivotal thanksgiving in her childhood.
A message from the employees of Pixar:
This comment by CLaarkamp1287 on YouTube sums it up better than I could:
“For Pixar to do this kind of video takes major balls on their part. As a film company that is associated with being family-friendly, it is so often construed that homosexuality is a threat to family values, and here comes Pixar to completely dismiss that ridiculous myth. Awesome job, Pixar. Clearly, movies aren’t the only thing you excel at.”
Microsoft’s new controller-free gaming environment called Kinect for XBox 360 also doubles as a powerful digital toy for hackers. The open source drivers on the Kinect allow users to hook it up to PCs and push it in different directions like this:
The above was created by manipulating Kinect data in realtime through a C++ coding platform called Cinder. The end result makes live-action footage look like it’s gone through a Michelin Man toon shader.
Here is another person who is using the Kinect to create 3-D space:
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Dorse A. Lanpher is one of a handful of artists who can say he worked on Disney classics like Sleeping Beauty and 101 Dalmatians as well as contemporary features like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Tarzan. Lanpher recently self-published a memoir called Flyin’ Chunks and Other Things to Duck: Memoirs of a Life Spent Doodling for Dollars
UPDATE (No. 27, 2010): We are no longer accepting applications. Thank you to everybody who took the time to apply. We will be contacting everybody soon.
Cartoon Brew is growing. We’re currently looking to hire a News Editor for our expanding industry news section CB Biz. Candidates should have basic fluency with HTML. Experience with editing a website is helpful. This job is not full-time. In fact, it’s not even part-time. It will be approximately an hour’s worth of work daily. Duties may expand in the future.
Here’s the man himself, Jean “Mobius” Giraud, drawing amidst the exhibit hall at the CTN Animation Expo in Burbank yesterday. I was there and had a blast. Like the San Diego Comic Con (but much, much smaller and devoted solely to animation) there was so many things happening at the same time, so many people to meet, so many panels to attend. Congratulations to Tina Price and her crew for putting on a second event that was bigger and better than the first. A true success and a much needed venue for inspiration and networking. Can’t wait for next year!
I caught up with so many friends, spoke to so many acquaintances, colleagues, artists, creators and met so many Brew readers, my voice imploded. So while I’m resting up and drinking hot tea with honey today, I thought I’d open it up to those who attended. What did you think? Have a good time? Let us know in the Comments below.
Naz Ghodrati-Azadi is a 2009 Graduate of Sheridan’s Bachelor program in Classical Animation. She’s since moved to Burbank and is currently working as a freelance Animator/Character Layout artist at Warner Bros. Naz finally finished the hand drawn animated film she started years ago at Sheridan and has graciously posted it online for us to enjoy — just in time for Thanksgiving:
